How Big Is The Porn Industry?

Porn. Accept it or deny it but you know you have traveled into the realms of the incognito mode to watch it at least once. And if you’re one of the pros, your computer contains a folder whose path looks something like: C:\University\Courses\Marketing\Syllabus\Lectures\29\teenridesabigblack.mp4

Thank you for stumbling upon How Big Are They and today, we will go deeper into the world of porn to find out just how big the porn industry really is! My website’s name had never been more appropriate. *grins*

According to various reports, currently, the porn industry is worth approximately $97 billion. This money is enough to feed 4.8 billionpeople a day. But then again, the industry is satisfying a different hunger. All of this when it is consistently struggling with legal issues and piracy. In fact, every year, Hollywood releases roughly 600 movies and makes $10 billion in profit. Porn industry? 13,000 films and close to $15 billion in profit. The porn industry makes more money than Major League Baseball, The National Football League and The NBA combined. It’s clear which sports people prefer the most.

From the US alone, the industry generates roughly $10-12 billion every year. This is astounding when you realize that making a porno or acting in one is not legal in most states of the USA.

Speaking of acting, turns out, pornstars earnings are as big as their… You get the drift! In fact, Hillary Scott, one of the more famous pornstars these days recently signed a contract that pays her $250,000 a year. To put it in perspective, here is a comparison of her salary with people from other professions:

Imagine, somebody getting a higher pay to act as a nurse than an actual one. And the acting isn’t even good, just saying.

Interestingly enough, the wage gap is an issue in the world of porn as well, just the other way around. A female pornstar, on average, earns anything between $600 to $2000 for a porn scene. A male pornstar? $150 a scene. All that pounding for nothing! Ouch! Although, if you happen to be male and an aspiring pornstar, don’t lose hope yet. A male pornstar can earn as much as his female counterpart, provided he acts in gay porn. It’s called gay for pay, look it up!

As a matter of fact, Jenna Jameson, a household name when it comes to porn, is worth $30 million. That’s twice the net worth of Selena Gomez. In fact, she is worth more than Kate Upton ($20m), Harry Styles ($23m) and as much as Chris Brown and Demi Lovato. She even tried her hand at a strip club in Houston, where she would earn $2000 every night, almost three times more than an average stripper.

Surprised?

In the end, every pornstar needs a platform and what better platform than a nice and popular porn site. PornHub and XVideo, at the time of writing, are worth $2.5 billion and $3 billion respectively. In fact, XVideo, on its own, is bigger than Dropbox, CNN and New York Times combined. Porn over news, guess we have our priorities straight! In fact, XVideo is almost as big as Netflix and gets almost as many page views every day, both getting more or less 3 billion page views each day. In fact, Mind Geek, who owns PornHub, Brazzers, YouPorn and Reality Kings, is one of the top 3 bandwidth-consuming companies in the world, the other two being Google and Netflix. This is not surprising when you realize that every second, more than 30 million people are watching some sort of pornographic content. Share this post with them once they are done! Add to that, the porn industry and porn sites are largely responsible for popularizing some of the most useful technology. Ever used a projector, VHS, Blu-ray or, now, VR? Thank porn!

“It seems so obvious: if we invent a machine, the first thing we are going to do – after making a profit – is use it to watch porn.”

– Damon Brown

While it might sound amazing, it is not really that great to be a porn star or to be involved in the porn industry. For instance, pornstars have time and again admitted to being addicted to alcohol, painkillers, and major drugs to get through tough scenes. In fact, male pornstars inject drugs right in their pleasure pumps to maintain erections for longer period. Doesn’t sound as pleasurable now, does it?

When asked, “If you could say one thing to someone who’s looking at pornography, what would you say?”, Shelly Lubben, a former actress, said, “You’re contributing to your demise. And to your family’s demise, and your wife’s.”

What do you think about porn? Let me know in the comment below. If you liked this post, share this like you would share your latest favorite movie with your best friend! *wink wink* As always, thank you for reading and I will catch you in the next one!

27 Comments

I love porn. I believe if the stigma was removed and we all accepted and relished in porn and masturbation, we would have a better society. Think about it. No ISIS. No religious self righteousNess. We all watch porn and masturbate toget her and relish in the carnal desire. Society would dictate who could perform and anyone having sex must record it and share with the rest of the world. Uploaded videos of people masturbating to porn would get the participant an added bonus. The more sperm you squirt on shared video the richer you would be. This would transform society and create a utopia we could all live with. Seriously, think about it.

I was a girl who did porn from age 18 to 23, including some serious “hardcore porn”. I will admit it was a kinda seedy business and you had to be careful with the people you chose to work with, but it was nothing like hell on Earth as some people seem to think. Were there drugs around? Yep, but I didn’t do them for instance, and actually if you get hooked up your career is gonna be quite short b/c you will quickly deteriorate, not only physically, but as a worker. It’s serious job, you can’t be totally high and expect to perform properly —and if you’re too high, the viewers will notice it, and the producers don’t like that. Are there guys who inject stuff in their cocks? Yes there are, but same problem, their cocks are pretty much their “working tool” and they will deteriorate fast. Same with everything.

I’d say it was sometimes fine, sometimes hard, sometimes you felt really comfy and OK, sometimes you couldn’t wait for the shot to end and leave —pretty much like many other jobs. But I earned very good money, especially with the hardcore stuff, enough to jump-start my own business at age 24 (which BTW is not sex-related.) I come from a background that couldn’t have allowed me to do that in a million years. Nowadays I’m a kinda successful young businesswoman (not a millionaire, but enough to live decently) and I’m not ashamed of anything I did. Oh, and I discovered a couple kinks that now I enjoy in my private life (and other stuff that I wouldn’t do ever again)!

[…] In truth, there is very little political and corporate pressure to repeal the Penal Code. While some online fans argue that the censorship “ruins” Japanese porn, the truth is that they have a $20 billion porn industry, which is the largest in the world. The censorless American industry brings in $10 to $12 billion. […]

Those numbers are very alarming. It’s concerning to me to see the direction that society is going as a whole. Thanks for sharing this. I think people need to be more educated on this matter. Well-written article!

[…] than one-third of all internet traffic is related to pornography. The porn industry generates more money per year than Major League Baseball, the National Football League, and the National Basketball Association […]

Sorry but I totally disagree. If that were true, almost every marriage and family with an Internet connection would be ripped apart by now. In your own article you have stated how BIG is it, and further I saw some internal industry data when I worked at it (which I can’t share, sorry… but I also worked as a bookkeeping aide for a couple of the companies I worked at.) *Almost* every home watches porn —there are cookies and stuff like that to “follow” your customers and potential customers (freeloaders), y’know. If a marriage or family has trouble with porn, they don’t really have trouble with porn, they ALREADY have trouble and porn can help or not. On the other hand, we received lots of feedback telling us that marriages which were “on the brink” had improved their sexual life and their entire relationship as a consequence by watching our porn (and I guess whoever else’s.)

Porn is not a problem. The problem is Home Sapien doesn’t have any company. This is why Star Trek was/is popular. Think about the UNREAL profits from Star Wars. These are two examples of shows, movies, etc., that created company for Homo Sapiens, and it was this “company” that made both of these very successful businesses so successful. Humans are lonely, and this has resulted in a population explosion. I suppose I could write just about anything, when discussing porn, and it may or may not make sense. Stress likely contributes to viewership, not spaceship. Stress may or may not be the result of INJUSTICE. Homo Sapien stress could be, if it isn’t already, a field of study independent of, say, psychology. People may associate stress related issues with psychology; however, it may be that psychology is a branch of Stress. When I was 5 years old, a doctor claimed there was a hole in my chest, and sent me into the big world with not a shred of an explaination, or proof that there was in fact a hole. I was a guinea pig/puppet for 38 years, were with each passing day things got slightly worse than the last, until, in 2008, I was finally stuck in the equivalent of the Star Wars Trash Compactor, without a princess by my side. This was not Hollywood fun and games, and this was after years of serious abuse, abuse because at least a few people knew the doctor’s claim was a vicious lie, and the observed for years as I fell further and further to pieces. You can picture me in the compactor and it is closing in on me…my fingers, hands, arms, etc., began sort of moving on their own, as if guided by Evolution, Creationism, or some combination thereof. I am guessing those unresolved questions from 1970, that had never been resolved concerning the suspicious claim that there is a hole in my sternum, which had been put in “self storage” became a part of my conscious thoughts once again, and after two years of being stranded on an Island in the Pacific, I discovered “THE TREASURE chest!” After a year of research, discovering such incredibly funny things as “The Sword” the diploid process, gladiolous, and manubrium, and finding my sternum no different than normal sternum, and a couple LOUIS LASAGNA half grins (for some reason MDs won’t discuss it), I got my feet on the ground for the first time since early1970. Had I not been slammed by fallout from Fukashima, I may now have the name of Lucky. Was I a porn star from the time the doctor lied in 1970 until I discovered the truth in 2008? If I was not, then can any of you Americans that believe porn is very, very bad, explain what I was? How about people who believe porn is very, very good–Any explanation? And people who Are neither here nor there when it comes to porn? Was this experiment, that the public was never informed about, something like a Frankenstien project–psychological Frankystein, say, involving at some point Dr. Vytautas Karoblis, who had been in Nazi Germany, meant to create Michal Sun, who would be company for humans? May be something to chew on while “we” are involved with porn or not involved with porn; as if this is, now, particularly after 26 years of the “public” Internet, how the world, or Homo Sapien is divided, which, in spite of the fact I call myself HOMO GUINEA PIG, is not HOMO SAPIEN and HOMO GUINEA PIG, not to my knowledge. No warning labels on computers, for example, but porn is evil! I don’t believe porn is a public health crisis, I believe Homo Sapien’s inability to handle being so very alone, both here on planet earth (in the since Neaderthal is extinct), and in near space ( near constituting the solar system) is possibly the crisis. Not long ago, human intelligence, revealed what scientists call the RED GIANT, meaning the Sun in several billion years, and that, perhaps saddle, planet Earth is not a permanent fixture either in the solar system, the milky way, or a galactic zone, or the so-called Universe. This has certainly had an enormous affect on humans, yet when it cones time to pinpoint the affects, is there any consencous?

Never thought in a million years, I’d fully read a post on pornography lol. Reading about the crazy monies made sent shivers down my spine…. maybe I’m in the wrong business lol. On a more serious note, very good write-up, I also have learnt something today. Keep up the good work Sujal and you won’t be short of readers…… I promise.

Didn’t you read that male actors need to inject their penises? I don’t care what I make, that sight is something I don’t want to experience in my wildest dreams. You are in the correct line, don’t worry!

As someone whose worked in this industry I know more than most that theres a distinct lack of money in it for both the models & the producers.
Pornography is a dying business due to free online websites & pirating.

Some women dream of doing pornography to earn these elusive millions that never ever will come.

I was on the right side, I helped run a website. I earned more than the models & got to keep my clothes on!